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Maluuba Closes $9 Million in Series A Financing to Further Advancements in Deep Learning

Dave Grannan Joins as Chairman of Board as the Company Announces That Its AI Platform Is Now Integrated Across More Than 50 Million Devices Globally

WATERLOO, ON--(Marketwired - Jan 20, 2016) - Maluuba, a deep-learning company helping machines think, reason and communicate with human-like intelligence, today announced a Series A round of $9M CAD, bringing its total funding to $12 million to date.

Maluuba's funding, which will be used to further enhance Maluuba's deep learning research and development, as well as product expansion in the automotive and IoT sectors, includes Emerillon Capital, Nautilus Ventures and undisclosed strategic investors. Dave Grannan, previously vice president at Nuance Communications, president & CEO at Vlingo, and currently co-founder & CEO of Light, has joined as chairman of the board. As part of this round, Brian Kang, managing director of Nautilus Ventures, and Ludovic Andre, managing director of Emerillon Capital, have also joined as board members.

"Natural language is the unsung hero of deep learning right now, and Maluuba has the chops to significantly advance how we think about and interact with all the machines in our lives," said Dave Grannan, co-founder & CEO of Light. "Maluuba's innovation in natural language understanding brings me back to my Vlingo roots and I'm excited to support the next wave of change with the bright minds at Maluuba."

Maluuba is an early leader in using deep reinforcement learning to solve language-understanding problems and in training machines to model decision-making capabilities of the human brain. The company currently enables interactive natural language and conversational dialogue experiences in over 50 million smart devices globally including IoT, mobile phones and smart TVs. Supporting more than 10 languages, Maluuba provides its technology for several industry OEMs including LG.

"At Maluuba, we're focused on solving cutting-edge problems in artificial intelligence, specifically in natural language understanding, to give machines human-like intelligence," said Sam Pasupalak, co-founder & CEO of Maluuba. "We're integrating this technology into a portfolio of products to make interactions with smart devices easier and more seamless than ever before -- and this funding will open the door to even more possibilities for us."

"No one is tackling deep learning like Maluuba. Their ability to customize solutions for partners in a variety of industries gives them the edge we look for and makes us confident in their potential as a long-term partner with patient capital," said Ludovic Andre, managing director of Emerillon Capital. "We also believe that our strong transatlantic network could accelerate Maluuba's penetration into the European market. Maluuba has proven to be a powerful solution for the world's biggest technology companies, so investing in the team was a no-brainer. We're thrilled to support them as they challenge and reinvent the dialogue between machine and man."

About MaluubaMaluuba Inc. is a global, natural language understanding company founded in 2011. The company's goal is to create a world where intelligent machines work hand-in-hand with humans to advance the collective intelligence of the human species. Maluuba's natural language technology has been deployed across more than 50 million devices in the smart phone, smart TV and IoT industries in over 10 languages. Maluuba's engineering and customer operations are located in Waterloo, Ontario, with a research office in Montreal dedicated to solving fundamental problems in language understanding for innovative products that will further advance AI systems. For more information, visit: www.maluuba.com.